The Jefferson Key Read Online Free PDF

unmanly course ascribed to you shall be your ruin and that I shall live to enjoy that day
.
    Andrew Jackson

    Hale stared at the second sheet, it also encased in plastic.
    His family had tried to solve Jefferson’s cipher for 175 years. Experts had been hired. Money had been spent.
    But the key had eluded them.
    He heard footsteps approaching from the ship’s forward and his personal secretary entered the salon.
    “Switch on the television.”
    He saw the look of concern in the man’s eyes.
    “It’s bad.”
    He found the remote and activated the screen.
----
    MALONE FINISHED HIS APPLE AND KEPT THE NEWSPAPER OPEN before him. He noticed no story about any presidential trip to New York. Odd. Presidents usually appeared with much fanfare. He should leave the hotel, and quickly. Every second he lingered was making the effort that much more difficult. He knew the Grand Hyatt lived up to its name, a massive, multistoried complex that thousands of people streamed into and out of twenty-four hours a day. Doubtful that the police or Secret Service could seal off every access, at least not this fast. Two televisions played in the room, and he saw how cellphone cameras had indeed captured images—but thankfully, most were blurred messes. No word as yet on Daniels’ condition. People chattered about the attack, remarking how it had occurred right below them. A few had heard the bangs and seen the rocket. The two suits with radios on the other side of the lounge kept their attention below, talking into their radios.
    He stood to leave.
    The agents abandoned the window and rushed straight for him. He braced himself to react, noting that the thick wooden table supporting the apples and newspapers could be used to break their advance.
    Of course, they carried guns and he didn’t, so a table would go only so far.
    The two agents brushed past him and bolted out the door, straight for the elevators, one of which they entered when an open car arrived.
    He heaved a silent sigh, then left, pressing the DOWN button, deciding to take the direct approach.
    Straight out the main doors.

SIX

    WYATT WAITED IN THE GRAND HYATT’S BUSY LOBBY , FILLED with tourists here for a weekend in the Big Apple, now made that much more exciting by someone trying to kill the president of the United States. He’d listened to snippets of conversations from a nearby lounging area and learned that no one knew if Daniels had been hit, just that he sped from the scene. Some recalled the Reagan assassination attempt from 1981, when only after the president was headed into surgery had an official statement been made.
    At least a dozen New York City police and half that many Secret Service were now racing through the two-story lobby. Voices were raised and positions were assumed near escalators and exits. Hard to say where Malone would make his move, but the paths out of this hotel were limited to an entry down one floor, to his left, that led out onto East 42nd Street—as well as another set of adjacent glass doors that opened into a tunnel connecting with Grand Central Terminal—and a second set of glass doors one level up, which he could observe from his vantage point. If he knew his adversary as well as he thought he did, Malone would simply walk out the main doors. Why not? No one had seen his face, and the best place to hide was always in plain sight.
    He realized the authorities would love to clear the hotel, but that could prove impossible. There were simply too many people on the twenty-plus floors. With the usual six months of prep time for a presidential visit, the Secret Service would have been able to handle this. As it was, they’d barely had eight weeks, their main tactic secrecy since no travel announcement had been made until this morning, when the White House simply said that Daniels would be in New York on a personal visit. The precedent for that came from a past president who’d made an unannounced trip with his wife to see a Broadway